| Written by John Shea,
on 17-06-2000 08:00
|
Published in : Reviews, Movies |
Being reviewed is probably the worst thing that could happen to this movie. It's not that the movie is a steaming pile of garbage as some critics would have you believe. It's just that it's the kind of movie that is somewhat entertaining while your watching it but if you start to think about it the whole thing starts to unravel at an alarming rate. I am of course assuming that you didn't think about it while you were watching it.
 This is the kind of movie that you assume actors appear in so that studios will pay them to appear in movies that challenge them but flop horrendously at the box office. That's the only way you can explain the fact that Angelina Jolie gets top billing for this but only appears in roughly ten minutes of the film.
Basically the plot is that Memphis Raines (Nicolas Cage) is a retired car thief living in the middle of nowhere teaching five year old kids to drive go carts. His younger brother screws up trying to steal a bunch of cars and the guy who hired him is going to kill him if Memphis doesn't steal the cars himself in three days. Got that? Don't give it to much thought, it boils down to stealing a lot of really hot cars in a very short of time.
The most telling moment in this movie is when we meet the villain. He goes off on some strange rant reserved in movies for homicidal maniac villains. After hearing it the two characters listening look at each other with expressions that say in no uncertain terms, "That was stupid."
This is a summer movie so really all that matters is thea action. It takes an awfully long time to get to that action but it's pretty good when it finally arrives. Their is a big car chase at the end featuring a 1967 Shelby Mustang GT 500. I probably gave this movie an extra star just to watch this machine in action. It's a growling snarling beast that seems to have a personality all its own. In the big chase I was actually far more concerned that it would get dinged up than whether or not our hero successfully evaded the police. That alone speaks volumes about the movie as a whole.
The cars are interesting and the people aren't. The point of the movie seems to be to show off lots of cool cars. The movie's landscape is peppered with Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Jaguars, Mercedes, BMWs, Porsches, Loti, Corvettes, Cadillacs, Cobras and so on and so on. Almost every actor in the movie is someone you've heard of but apart from the occasional chuckle at a good line, there isn't a reason to care for any of them. Heck, Vinnie Jones, who was great in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels plays a character who doesn't even speak until the end of the movie. You just know some studio exec had him inserted into the movie after watching Dogma and thought that Silent Bob guy was pretty funny. His character is about as developed as anyone else in this flick.
I guess what I'm saying is that the movie isn't horrible. It's not great either. It's just some empty fluff of a movie. You can have a little fun with it but expect to forget about it entirely afterwards.
- John Shea
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